Professional Experience Placement

How do nurses learn cultural competence? Garneau and Pepin (2015) explored how nurses develop cultural competence by using grounded theory. Nurses and students were recruited and data was collect by using participant observation prior to undertaking a semi-structured questionnaire. Analysis was undertaken in three phases. These were generating, developing and verifying concepts. An in-depth analysis comprised of four key components.

These are:

“The development of cultural competence is a process of reflection and action and consists of learning to bring he different realities together to provide effective care in a culturally diverse context This process involves developing the three dimensions of cultural competence: building a relationship with the other, working outside the dual practice framework and reinventing practice in action This process involves three levels of development triggered by clinical immersion experience, whether local or international Students or nurses learning environment, which is representative by their personal trajectory and by social and political dimensions of care, fosters this process” (p1064).

There are dimensions and levels of cultural competence development that are described in this paper. The three dimensions interact and influence each other as cultural competence is developed through three levels. Learning cultural competency is influenced by the nurses or student individual, organisational or systems contexts. For example, these may be personal, social or political.

The authors suggested the elements of the development of cultural competence they proposed could be used to identify effective cultural competence development strategies that could be incorporated into nursing education and continuing professional development. It is essential to create environments that promotes cultural competence. It is also important for clinical supervisors to have well developed cultural competence, not only for interactions with their patients, they need to engage and support students from diverse backgrounds. Further complexity is apparent when learners from diverse backgrounds need to understand about nursing and also develop cultural competence within the Australian context. It is the role of the clinical supervisor to assist in enabling students to develop the dimensions described within this paper.

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